Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE NOBLE ART OF PAINTING, by THOMAS FLATMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE NOBLE ART OF PAINTING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Strike a bold stroke, my muse, and let me see
Last Line: You'll praise the pencil and deride the pen.
Subject(s): Paintings & Painters


STRIKE a bold stroke, my Muse, and let me see
Thou fear'st no colours in thy poetry,
For pictures are dumb poems; they that write
Best poems do but paint in black and white,
The pencil's amulets forbid to die,
And vest us with a fair eternity.
What think ye of the gods, to whose huge name
The pagans bow'd their humble knees? Whence came
Their immortalities but from a shade,
But from those portraitures the painter made?
They saddled Jove's fierce eagle like a colt
And made him grasp in's first a thunderbolt.
Painters did all: Jove had, at their command,
Spurr'd a jackdaw and held a switch in's hand.
The demigods, and all their glories, be
Apelles' debtors, for their deity.
Oh how the catholics cross themselves and throng
Around a crucifix, when all along
That's but a picture! How the spruce trim lass
Doats on a picture in the looking-glass!
And how ineffable's the peasant's joy
When he has drawn his picture in his boy!
Bright angels condescend to share a part
And borrow glorious plumes from our rare art.
Kings triumph in our sackcloth, monarchs bear
Reverence t' our canvass 'bove the robes they wear.
Great fortunes, large estates, for all their noise,
Are nothing in the world but painted toys.
Th' Egyptian hieroglyphics pictures be,
And painting taught them all their A.B.C.
The Presbyterian, th' Independent too,
All would a colour have for what they do.
And who so just that does not sometimes try
To turn pure painter and deceive the eye?
Our honest sleight of hand prevails with all;
Hence springs an emulation general.
Mark how the pretty female-artists try
To shame poor Nature with an Indian dye.
Mark how the snail with's grave majestic pace
Paints earth's green waistcoat with a silver lace.
But -- since all rhythms are dark, and seldom go
Without the Sun -- the Sun's a painter too;
Heaven's famed Vandyke, the Sun, he paints -- 'tis clear --
Twelve signs throughout the zodiac every year:
'Tis he, that at the spicy spring's gay birth
Makes pencils of his beams and paints the Earth;
He limns the rainbow when it struts so proud
Upon the dusky surface of a cloud;
He daubs the Moors, and, when they sweat with toil,
'Tis then he paints them all at length in oil;
The blushing fruits, the gloss of flowers so pure,
Owe their varieties to his miniature.
Yet, what's the Sun? each thing, where'er we go,
Would be a Rubens, or an Angelo;
Gaze up, some winter night, and you'll confess
Heaven's a large gallery of images.
Then stoop down to the Earth, wonder, and scan
The Master-piece of th' whole creation, Man:
Man, that exact original in each limb,
And Woman, that fair copy drawn from him.
Whate'er we see's one bracelet, whose each bead
Is cemented and hangs by painting's thread.
Thus, like the soul o' th' world, our subtle art
Insinuates itself through every part.
Strange rarity! which canst the body save
From the coarse usage in a sullen grave,
Yet never make it mummy! Strange, that hand,
That spans and circumscribes the sea and land --
That draws from death to th' life, without a spell,
As Orpheus did Eurydice from hell.
But all my lines are rude, and all such praise
Dead-colour'd nonsense. Painters scorn slight bays.
Let the great art commend itself, and then
You'll praise the pencil and deride the pen.





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